


The Team

by jjuu1l



Series: Junior Avengers and Friends [6]
Category: Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: F/F, M/M, Takes place during Speedsters vs. Feelings, Was originally part of that story but I decided that would be too many plot lines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 08:31:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14328591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjuu1l/pseuds/jjuu1l
Summary: Cara hadn’t been worried about Katie. Katie was the kind of person that could lose the entire world and still find a way to work through it. She was strong, smart, and another positive word that started with an S. She’d demonstrated it a few months prior after teleporting herself to another dimension and staying sane enough to agree to see a therapist in a few months.No, Cara never had to worry about Katie, but Violet?For as long as Cara had known Violet she’d been this wild card. Sure of her powers, but unsure of herself. Questioning whether the team wanted her there or just pretended too because of her powers. Because of this Cara had taken to reassuring Violet whenever she could. Laughing at her jokes, taking her questions seriously, doing what she could to make Violet feel welcomed.





	The Team

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I missed a few weeks, because life has been a little hectic. Oopsy, hopefully as I enter the last few weeks of school I can get back to writing this series and the next couple of stories I have planned out.  
> Please enjoy!

Cara hadn’t been worried about Katie. Katie was the kind of person that could lose the entire world and still find a way to work through it. She was strong, smart, and another positive word that started with an S. She’d demonstrated it a few months prior after teleporting herself to another dimension and staying sane enough to agree to see a therapist in a few months.

No, Cara never had to worry about Katie, but Violet?

For as long as Cara had known Violet she’d been this wild card. Sure of her powers, but unsure of herself. Questioning whether the team wanted her there or just pretended too because of her powers. Because of this Cara had taken to reassuring Violet whenever she could. Laughing at her jokes, taking her questions seriously, doing what she could to make Violet feel welcomed.

Did it help that she liked the way Violet’s heart sped up whenever Cara laughed at her worse jokes? Maybe, but she was a part of this team, which meant she couldn’t chance ruining the dynamic. Ingrid and Nash were doing exactly that, it made Cara unnecessarily anxious.

But she couldn’t deny worrying when the speedster hadn’t returned the day before, leaving her alone with the lovebirds and bratty twins. Hearing Katie’s ringtone instead of Violet’s didn’t help that worry.

“Hel-” She was cut off almost immediately.

“I need your help! I’m tiny and Tommy showed up all bloody and unconscious and I don’t know how to wake him up and Violet won’t talk to me and I think I’m having a mental break down. Please, please, please, please help! Shit- I think someone’s at the front door I- fuck, fuck, fuck!” Then she hung up. Cara dropped her phone.

What the hell was happening!? How was she supposed to get all the way to California that quickly?! Her brain ran through a few possible scenarios. Someone snuck into Kate’s house, someone killed Tommy, someone was pretending to be a dead Tommy to trick them, Katie was hallucinating, Violet was pulling a very mean prank.

This is a trap. Is the thing to catch her attention.

“Cara? Are you okay? Who was on the phone?” Danielle asked moving towards her. Cara doesn’t have a chance to respond before she hears Ingrid and Nash’s heartbeats rapidly approaching. She stands, partially in a panic, and moves to the door. Danielle follows behind her repeating her question.

“Katie, something bad is happening at Kate’s house. Something about Tommy being unconscious and Violet not responding. I’m not sure yet. All I know is we need to get down there.” She eventually responds. Before Danielle has the chance to ask any more questions Ingrid and Nash come barreling down the hallway. They’re both breathing heavy.

Cara can tell they’re panicked, can tell that something bad is happening. But she can’t tell what is happening, nothing felt off about today, she didn’t hear any new heartbeats or the sound of alarms going off. Nothing should be wrong, but here they are, like the horsemen of the apocalypse.

“Someone’s snuck into the mansion, they stole a bunch of old hydra files, a-and we think they still might be in the building.”

 

\--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--

 

Maybe volunteering to mentor a teenage group of superheroes was a bad idea. Danielle was willing to admit to that. What she wasn’t willing to admit to was that she lived for these exciting parts. The parts when everything seemed to work against them.

In this case the mansion itself.

And they, the heroes, came out from the bottom and won the day. Usually after discovering something to keep them going, to win against the bad guys.

However, she didn’t live for this difficult middle bit. Where they fought against everything, getting much more injured than they needed to be, and hiding with a trainee in a supply closet. In their hurry she hadn’t seen where everyone else went off too.

“Did you see where everyone else went?” She asked, even with her enhanced abilities she couldn’t see who she was stuck with.

“No, but I can hear their heartbeats.” Danielle sighs with relief. Had she been stuck with Ingrid or Nash, their anxiety about the other would only increase her own worry. Had she been stuck with David or Jack, she would’ve been reminded of just how young all of these kids under her care were. But she learned very quickly that Cara was the type to only worry when everything was said and done. When she’d done everything in her power to set things right, when the only thing she could do was let the pieces fall into place.

And there was a lot about this situation that they could control.

“Where are they all going?” She asked. Cara made an unsure noise before going quiet again. In silence she waited for Cara to tell her something, anything. Knowing something was significantly better than knowing nothing, which was what she knew now.

“Ingrid and Jack are hiding in a bathroom stall a few yards down the hall, while Nash and David are- fuck, they’re stuck in the elevator. I think I can hear a voice talking to them, but everything’s really, really, noisy. I can’t tell if it’s a voice or just JARVIS.” Which doesn’t cause Danielle’s heart to swell and pop like a helium balloon. No, because she has a plan.

Does it involve getting her team out of this tower take over? Yes.

Does it involve a lot of assumptions about who’s taking the tower over? Yes.

Is it a good plan? Well, that is yet to be seen.

 

\--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--

“W-where are we?” Jack asked feeling a distinct loss without David. For all of his teasing he didn’t want this to be the way he died. Alone, with a girl he barely knew, trapped in what he thinks might be a girl’s bathroom. He wanted his brother. He wanted to go down fighting, a blaze of glory and all that.

“Second story bathroom.” She replied breathing heavily, he thinks she’s sitting on the top of a toilet, but he can’t tell. “Sit up here with me.” She adds, he hesitates for a second before joining her. He remembers how the stalls around them are all ajar, empty. If someone were to come looking for them, they’d be caught immediately.

The thought makes his stomach drop to the floor. Flopping around like a fish out of water, desperate for something, specifically someone. Ingrid hisses next to him, when he settles in next to her. They’re shoulder to shoulder; thanks to the small stall he can feel her rapid breaths. He wants to pull away. He wants to pull away and run, find David, and go home.

Unfortunately, home isn’t an option. Neither is finding David right now.

“What are we going to do?” He whispers. Both of them flinch when the lights flicker, and Jack has to remind himself that he’s a superhero. He can fight this guy. He can take them down. The thoughts impower him for a few seconds before he remembers that David isn’t here. And since David isn’t here he can’t be that superhero.

It’s just not possible.

“Stay here, think about our options, figure out a game plan, hope that everyone else is safe, and uh, get out okay.” She states, like it’ll all just go according to plan. That it’ll just be that easy. He turns to look at her, she’s frowning at her hands. He’s reminded that he’s not the only one here left stranded without their other half.

“Okay, that’s a good plan.” He gives her a small smile. Trying, and mostly succeeding, in giving her what ever comfort he can offer. “I think we should probably start with getting through the airducts. It’s the only place where JARVIS can’t track us, and if whoever this is has got the mansion under their control then we can’t risk JARVIS tracking us.” Jack thinks that he can see Ingrid nod. She nods a second and a third time before lighting her hand on fire.

“I have a plan, but you’re going to have to follow my directions exactly. Got it?” She asked, and he nodded. The sooner he could get David back, the better.

 

\--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--

 

“Shit!” He yelled before sliding down the elevator wall. Holding his head in his hands David felt like sobbing. Nash was on the other side of the tiny room, trying to think of a way to use his powers to get them out of this shit storm. But the only result is the wall around him freezing and cracking as he falls further into his pity party.

Nash doesn’t respond. At least at first, first he only hums in agreement, then David can hear creaking from the other side of their elevator. Next a hand on his shoulder. When he finally finds the will to look up again he sees Nash sitting next to him.

“So, I heard you have a crush.” David feels his cheeks flush in stead of his response. When he hears a laugh, he doesn’t think to much into it. Other than the fact that someone else is going to tell him to confess his feelings. “Those things suck. I mean really, feelings in general suck, the whole ‘will they like me’ ‘won’t they like me’. It’s exhausting.”

David doesn’t want to agree. He really doesn’t. He doesn’t like the way Nash treats Jack, or the way he talked about Virginia after her and Katie had broken up. He doesn’t like Nash, not at all. Never in a million years.

Except. Except maybe he does? Maybe he’s noticed the way he holds his tongue after Ingrid tells him that something ‘ _isn’t funny Nash_ ’. Maybe he’s noticed the way he’s made a fool of himself over the last couple of weeks, without Katie, they’ve all been especially upset. Maybe he’s started to admire the way his face lights up every time Ingrid walks into a room.

Maybe his crush isn’t on a boy from school. Maybe it’s on a boy that he’s known for a few months. Maybe he’s terrified that this boy will laugh at him, then tell his girlfriend, and they’ll both laugh.

“I know that he doesn’t like me.” He responds, scooting away from Nash. The red alarms in his head going off. “He has a girlfriend.” He adds just to get Nash off the subject. But it doesn’t, not entirely.

“Ingrid was interested in someone else before we got together.” This is common knowledge, everyone had known about Ingrid and Katie’s few months of flirting. Before Katie met Virginia, before the incident, before Ingrid and Nash got together. Even David and Jack knew about it, and they’d only been on the team for four months or so. “She was actually interested in a lot of people before we got together, and she was interested in me before I realized I was into her.”

Now this was new information.

“And I know everyone says that I’ve been into her from the beginning, and maybe I was, but I didn’t realize it. Not until we lost Katie, and I was going to freeze everything over, and she-she slipped her hand into mine. Held it like she wasn’t terrified. Like that one simple thing could just, fix everything. That’s when I realized I really, really, liked her. Maybe even loved her.” The thought of Nash loving Ingrid makes his heart do all kinds of strange things. It soars before plummeting to the fiery depths of hell. Cracking and breaking like a firework.

“I like you.” He blurts out, and his face turns as red as a tomato. Which he hates. He’s been allergic to tomatoes since he was a baby and even thinking about the damn things gives him a headache.

“I guessed.” Nash replies, and David wants to scream. Because it’s hard enough to keep things away from Jack, who he hasn’t stopped to worry about because the moment he does he’ll probably be useless. It’s hard enough to keep things away from someone who knows all of your thoughts, so he’d had comfort in knowing he probably wouldn’t be so obvious to everyone else. “You’re a cool kid though, you’ll have someone much better than me falling for you before the week’s over.”

“It’s Saturday.” David deadpans in response. He wants to cry, he won’t of course, Nash is right there. But he wants to.

“My statement still stands little dude.” He’s relieved to find that Nash isn’t acting weird around him. There’s something comforting in that fact, that he’s not going to start treating David differently. “Besides, Ingrid and Jack are going to pop out of that-” He points at a vent in the ceiling. “-any minute now and save us. So, you’ll have the rest of your life to get someone great.”

David’s not sure if he believes him. But when Ingrid and Jack pop their heads into the elevator a few minutes later he decides that sometimes you don’t need to believe in things for them to happen.

 

\--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--

 

Maybe she should be more worried about Jack’s sanity. Maybe she should worry about David’s glances towards Nash and herself. Maybe she should worry about Danielle and Cara, who they haven’t seen in upwards of an hour. Maybe she should worry that the vents have scraped against her knees for so long that they’ve gone numb.

But she isn’t worried.

“How much longer are we going to be stuck up in these vents?” She hears Nash ask, he’s at the very back of their little train. David right in front of him, and Jack right behind herself. The twins have been groaning for the last fifteen minutes about the spiderwebs and few insects they’ve come across. Until now, she’s managed to keep her temper, not snapping when the one of the twin’s squeals at the sight of a cockroach, not yelling when another bolt scrapes against her leg.

“Ask me that again and I will burn the vent underneath us and we will fall into whatever room is underneath us. Got it?” Her words are cold compared to how hot her skin is getting. The vent under her starts to burn, leaving scorch marks for her companions to crawl over.

The rest of the group make sounds of agreement and nothing else. They continue on like that, in silence, jumping at every noise isn’t them, until they reach a hatch. Ingrid chances a quick glance down the hatch and sees a large room with computers. On one side of the room is a pair of girls, leaned over the main console and pressing buttons at random. Their words are hushed and panicked, making louder sounds by the number of buttons they’re pressing.

She recognizes one annoyed groan and takes the hatch off of the vent. A few seconds later and she’s on the ground, watching Cara and Danielle continue to lock themselves out of system after system.

“What are you guys doing?” She asked stalking up to them and pushing them away as she attempted to fix their mess. Behind her she heard the twins drop down from the vent shaft and waited for Nash to drop down as well before starting to hack back into their system.

“Do we have a plan?” Nash asked coming up behind Ingrid, his hand lingering a few inches away from her own. He tried to hold her hand too many times and knew now that trying to establish contact was a one-way ticket to a punch. For the first time in the last hour she feels herself smile.

“I don’t, does Cara?” She doesn’t take her eyes off the screen in front of her as Nash moves back and discusses their next play with Danielle and Cara. Firewall, after firewall goes down as the frown on her face grows. This level of encryption is far beyond anything she’s seen before. Even if Cara and Danielle had spent the last half hour completely tripping every string Mr. Stark had set up before leaving, it wouldn’t have brought up this much protective software.

 _The only way this much protection would’ve been triggered is if- oh no._ She thinks, eyes widening. Behind her she can hear the rest of the group arguing over their next steps. Words bouncing off red stained walls, rebounding off of warning lights and loud speakers.

“Guys, I think we’re being hacked.”

 

\--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--

 

Ingrid manages to ward off the hacker for another half hour before she groans in annoyance and does something none of them expected.

She pulls the plug.

Quite literally too, she reaches around the system and pulls the plug, effectively shutting down the entire system and sending JARVIS into a panic. The walls are sealing themselves around them as everyone’s warned that they will need to wait for a senior Avenger member to release them. And in all honesty Cara’s pretty damn grateful for Ingrid’s impatience.

“Now what?” Jack asked, and by how close his and David’s heartbeats are, she can tell he’s leaning against his brother. They’d somehow gotten over their argument and were back to being thick as thieves. Which Cara’s also grateful for.

“We just try to not die.” Ingrid helpfully supplies. Her words aren’t filled with malice or sarcasm, but a sad resignation. It reminds her of when Matt would tell her that everything would work out. He always spoke with a resignation to life, she knew as well as him that life would move on without her. Yet here they were, still alive, still fighting with everything they had. “Anyone have any last regrets? Things they wished they’d said? Just in case?”

The room grows silent for a moment, Cara can hear several people’s pulses begin to race at the thought of dying, at the thought of expressing the thoughts they might die with. So, instead of waiting for someone else to start a melodramatic speech, she speaks.

“I swear to god if I die before I kiss Violet I’m going to lose my fucking mind.” And her teammates laugh. Because kissing Violet has always seemed like an inevitability, something that was going to happen because the sparks between them were too electrifying to not turn into a bonfire. She knew they were going to end up together, because they had to. It was fate, or destiny, or something that didn’t make her sound like an old folk tale. It was an end game thing, like Katie’s parents, or Superman and Lois Lane, or some other equivalent that Cara couldn’t think of.

“I’m going to lose my shit if I die before puberty.” Jack and David say at the same time, and it’s the funniest damn thing Cara’s ever heard in her entire life. The group dissolves into giggles at their two youngest members. She’s not sure how long the laughing lasts, but she’s in a much better mood when they descend back into silence.

“I’m going to come back and kill whoever stole those fucking files if we die in this room.” Danielle states like that’s a normal thing to do. Another round of giggles, this time much smaller, makes its way around the room as they continue to admit things.

“I’ve always wanted to know how to fly.” Nash admits.

“I want to know if I could go into the sun’s atmosphere and not burn up.” Ingrid wonders, and Cara has no doubt she could easily find out.

“I want to know where our powers came from.” David says, and she thinks she might hear Jack suck in a deep breath. But she can’t tell for sure.

“I want to fall in love. My parents had this epic and fucked up love story, and I want something like that. Not as fucked up, but epic.” Danielle says, Cara nods her head in agreement. But doubts she’ll find love without it being a little fucked up, because everyone in their field is a little fucked up. Knowing Danielle, she’ll be halfway dead and find love, then beat up death just to get back to that person.

“I want to know what the sky looks like.” Cara whispers, it’s in the middle of yet another round of giggles so she doesn’t expect anyone to hear her. And they don’t. So, she still considers the wish a secret.

Just another secret in her life.

 

\--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--__--

 

When the senior avenger member (Mr. Kaplan) finally comes to unlock the building, they’re forced to acknowledge they might’ve had a less stressful day than everyone else. When Violet’s rushed into the medical wing with Cara trailing behind her, and when Katie finally snaps out of shock enough to give the team an abridged version of everything that’s happened; they acknowledge that their day isn’t the shittiest. Even though it did suck.

They all wait in terror for Violet to wake up. With Cara never leaving her side, even when the adults suggest she get some sleep. (She told them sleeping was out of the question until Violet woke up.) They wait for weeks to get the full story from Katie, a heartbroken, shattered, Katie.

When they hear about Virginia’s true nature, they share her pain. Not in the same way, David and Jack give her hugs and offer to beat The One Who Shall Not Be Named up. Ingrid gives her a hug that would be un-platonic if not for their history. Nash promises that he’ll always stand with her, and if she wants to destroy some stuff, that he has a cousin who owns a discarded car lot that they can commandeer for an afternoon. Cara doesn’t say anything, she just leans her head against Katie’s shoulder and listens as she rants and cries.

They thank whatever god is out there that they’re still alive and curse every villain out there (now including a few choice words for The One Who Shall Not Be Named). They wait, still terrified, for Violet to wake up. They keep on living even when they’re worried for one of their own. They stand together, fight together, irrevocably linked.

They are the Junior Avengers, and if you touch one of their own? Well, they have just enough powers to fuck you up.


End file.
